Author: dexsmurf

At the end of the novel there are two frames one with a letter that Bruce sent to Alison where she says, “I think of his letter, the one where he does and doesn’t come out to me” (Bechdel 230). Then there is frame with a passage from James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. In his letter he is talking to Alison about her keeping her options open with her sexuality and it being a cop out, he says, “Taking sides is rather heroic, and I am not a hero.” Then in the next frame it shows Stephen Dedalus saying, “You saved men from drowning. I am not a hero however” (Bechdel 230). Here Stephen denies responsibility by saying he is not a hero and in the frame above Bruce uses this characters line to deny responsibility of choosing a side in terms of his sexuality. This is his way of coming out to Alison through a character of a novel’s words. In Autobiography of Red Geryon is able to express himself through his photographs because of his disconnect with language. He feels certain ways on the inside but isn’t able to express those feelings with language so he uses photography as a way of brings those feelings out. Similarly to Geryons use of a tool to represent himself and his feelings, Bruce uses literature and their characters to represent himself and his feelings. Unlike Geryon it is not because of his disconnect with language it’s because of his disconnect of his own sexual identity. He knows how he feels about his sexuality on the inside but he can’t expresses himself, so he uses the characters in the books he has read to connect with and be able to express himself.

“Not a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and non-existence” (MooToo 77). In this sentence from Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani MooToo, Tyler is trying to explain how he feels about his struggles with his sexuality and society. Before this sentence Tyler is trying on the dress because he knows even though at first it felt peculiar that it is right but he knows that he will get harassed for his ideas of his own sexuality. There is a difference between “feeling weird” with others vs. himself. He feels as if he doesn’t exist because he can’t be himself but with Miss Ramchandin he feels a type of existence. This is shown by her acceptance towards Tyler when tries on the dress. She didn’t act like she had to compliment him or that she had to say it didn’t look right. As he had the dress on he was internally conflicted compared to being pressured by the outside because Miss Ramchandin was the outside and her reaction of Tyler in the dress was that it was nothing out of norm. The feeling that Tyler is expressing is internalized homophobia. He is letting the negative views society has on homosexuality make him feel like a less of a person or that he should hate himself for feeling the way he feels in the dress. External homophobia is the pressures that society put on homosexuals about the prejudice against them but internalized homophobia dwells deeper. It takes the ideas society puts on homophobia and makes a homosexual person feel like they shouldn’t express what they really feel is right inside because its not what society thinks is right and this is why Tyler says that he’ll not ever be able to be a woman. As long as Tyler lets the internalized homophobia overrule him he will consistently be in this state of existence and non-existence.

The book’s title is Autobiography of Red a Novel in Verse; the two words that stand out here are autobiography and novel. An autobiography is a person writing about his or her own life while a novel is “A fictional prose narrative of considerable length.” The key word in the definition of a novel being fiction, which is the opposite of what the telling of personal life experiences represents. The purpose of this inventiveness is to show to the reader this person who uses the word red to express his feelings is also using a Greek myth to express himself in his autobiography, which gives him the ability to add fiction to his life story. Throughout the novel Geryon is trying to discover himself and express who he is through his autobiography. It is obvious that Geryon sometimes doesn’t know how to express him self which is shown by the use of the word red being things/emotions that he cant explain. So, at some points in this book he changes the truths of his life into fiction of what he wishes he could feel. This is shown when he writes an autobiography and then his mother at the parent teacher conference asks if he ever writes about anything with a happy ending and he then writes “New Ending. All over the world the beautiful red breezes went on blowing hand in had” (Carson 38). Geryon here uses his imagination to write a new ending like someone would use in a novel to create what he could experience.

 

 

 

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/novel

One of most rewarding experience I’ve had at college was a group project about homelessness in Carlisle. We spent a day with a “ homeless guide” and at the end of the day we spent the night at the homeless shelter. It might be crazy to relate this experience to queer theory but just as Halberstam does with pop culture, I’m taking something I know very well which was my own experience and relating it to the Halberstam’s queer time. The sentence that I chose to focus on was “Obviously not all gay, lesbian, and transgender people live their lives in radically different ways from their heterosexual counterparts, but part of what has made queerness compelling as a form of self-description in the past decade or so has to do with the way it has the potential to open up new life narratives and alternative relation to time and space (2).” The first part of the sentence is explaining that are gay, lesbian, and transgendered may have to do something things different in life or experience something things different but many experiences they have are the same as heterosexual people. Relating this to my experience just like heterosexual and homosexual individuals don’t live radically different experiences either do homeless and non-homeless people do. Like getting a job both individuals can be equally as qualified, one difference may be that a homeless person in Carlisle has to look at a job relatively close and someone living in an apartment in Carlisle can have a more wide spread job search because they have the means to travel to a far job. The sentence then talks about what Halberstam believes that society recently has found so interesting about queerness, which is the thought of new life narratives and alternative relation to time and space. From this second part, I want to focus on the lens Habersham creates about time. I think that Halberstams understanding of time is a construct of society and how we participate in it is just like a subculture. So if you participate in this subculture differently then someone else, your experience of time will be different. So Halberstam believes that queerness is thought to be outside of societies norms just like having kids before you get married, so these people will have a different understanding of time then someone that is heterosexual or gets married and then has kids. In that sentence there are binary opposites such as gay, lesbian, and transgender and it’s opposite being heterosexual counterparts. This relates to the word we defined dialectic meaning an investigation through reasoned argument, so the argument of the experience of time through these two poles. A repetition I saw was with self-description and life narrative these are two things used to illustrate how an individual has their own experiences. This relates to the word temporality meaning the linear progression of past, present, or future. An individuals life narrative doesn’t have an end goal of marriage or reproduction and then that persons self-description allows them to have a different thought of time then someone who’s self -description allows them to have a life narrative with getting married and having kids at the end of it. Something weird that I notice with this sentence is that she calls queerness compelling. I think its interesting that something that is out of social norm is so compelling, because its like that with homelessness its outside of societies orders but for a policy class our professor used it as a project because it was so interesting to learn about peoples experiences and about the polices we could implement to help homelessness in Carlisle. I took the lens of Halbertams thought about queerness and alternative relations of time to look at what I learned with my experience with the project, just like Halberstam says queerness is outside of societies order and that affects your concept of time, being homeless is having a way of life different which is a threat to social constructs of society so homeless people might have a different understanding of time. I explained how the way we participate in life is like a subculture and that subculture may see life differently. So, someone who goes home to the same big bed every night compared to someone who goes to a different church everyday of the week to sleep on a thin matt are in different subcultures which causes there to have different understandings of time.

“You never give away your heart you lend it time to time. If it were not how could we take it back without asking? “ I think these two lines from the novel shed light on the whole novel. When the narrator speaks about lending your heart out, I think he has a very narrow perspective on it. Before he met Louise, he taught himself not to give your everything to someone because they knew first handed first hand the evilness it can bring such as the affairs which had multiple of. Also, the evilness of lies that one has to tangle their self in while knowing your hurting the person that loves you, such as the narrator and Jacqueline. The words lend and take are very important in this because these words gives the reader a sense of possession. The narrator is giving the imagine of lending your heart like its an object you posses, but the first line of the novel is “why is the measure of love lost? (9)”. The narrator is explaining that when we lose something that means something to us is when we see the true value it had to us. So, I think the narrator is trying to show us that when you give away something that you control, you see how much it really means to you.

The second line is a question that shows how emotionally unattached the narrator was in the begging of the story. I think this line helps to show one of the main meanings of the book, which was to give people hope that people can change. The narrator went from having affairs with multiple women to finding the love of his life where he was so emotionally invested that he devoted weeks of his life to learning everything he could about human anatomy and cancer to help Louise. The first line also shows the readers the transformation of the narrator because they say with certainty that you NEVER give your heart away. By, the end of the book I think that they did give their heart away to Louise. It is said that if you love, someone, let them go. The narrator knew Louise needed help and that only her ex-husband could give her the right care she needed. Even though it was tough for the narrator to accept the idea of her being with him it was what he thought would be best for her and to me if you truly love someone you’ll always want what’s best for them even if its not what you want.

In class we discussed the painting, Love and the Pilgrim. We discussed that the narrator is the pilgrim holding on to the thicket of thorns, which was his troubled pass. In the beginning when the narrator only lent their heart out for weeks or a few months and had affairs with women this was his trouble pass, which was shown by the thorns. Louise who was the angle was showing him how to truly love someone and pulling him out of the thicket of thorns. Also, in Eve Sedgwicks book, Tendencies she illustrated societies perception of love and perfection through typical Christmas ideas. In Christmas ads there are always a happy family under the Christmas tree with Santa or the idea that a happy family that goes to church on Christmas and everything is perfect. These lines in Written On The Body help to show the realness of love. Another thing this novel helps us understand is breaking societies perception of many things such as the thought that being in love and in married is always perfect. This isn’t true; there is sometimes heartbreak, affairs, and lies all, which the novel shows us. Also, by not giving us a gender it made me break down any typical perception I had of a man and women in a relationship.

The sentence I choose to analyze was, “ Odd that marriage, a public display and free to all gives way to the most secret of liaisons, an adulterous affair (16) ”. I think this sentence is talking about the evil side to marriage that no one wants to talk about or experience but is something that does happens. Starting the sentence off with, “odd that marriage (16)” , shows the irony in this sentence because as great as marriage is there is underlying secrets. The first few words to describe marriage were public display and free to all, both of these representing a sort of freedom that brings us happiness because everyone can enjoy the freedom. Then the evil side is mentioned, which is the most secret of liaisons. I believe secret is an important word because in the paragraph above this sentence it asks the question of why an affair can be a secret, but someone saying their vows is said for everyone to hear. I think this line is related to the whole novel so far because the narrator commits affairs with married women and the women tries to explain why she did it, but she cant even explain it to her self. The narrator then tries to explain it for her by using the metaphor with the door and how the butler put on white gloves so no finger prints were left. I believe that this relates to where they use the words most secret to explain adulterous affair. I also believe that the word liaison is important vocabulary in this sentence and it represents this book because it means a relationship between two people. Marriage, love, which they started out the novel talking about, and an affair all require two people. I think this illustrates one of the mysteries the book is trying to show us. There is a relationship between two people; we know the gender of one but the other you have to shape for yourself. If you think it is a woman and man verse a woman and a woman does it make marriage, love, affairs, and other situations brought up in the book different?